Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Violence and Dystopia: Mimesis and Sacrifice in Contemporary Western Dystopian Narratives

Violence and Dystopia: Mimesis and Sacrifice in Contemporary Western Dystopian Narratives

Cojocaru, Daniel

Hardcover

Literary Criticism

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1443876135
ISBN13: 9781443876131
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Pages: 335
Weight: 1.35
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.20
Language: English
Violence and Dystopia is a critical examination of imitative desire, scapegoating and sacrifice in selected contemporary Western dystopian narratives through the lens of Rene Girard's mimetic theory. The first chapter offers an overview of the history of Western utopia/dystopia, with a special emphasis on the problem of conflictive mimesis and scapegoating violence, and a critical introduction to Girard's theory. The second chapter is devoted to J.G. Ballard's seminal novel Crash, Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club and Rant, and Brad Anderson's film The Machinist. It is argued that the car crash functions as a metaphor for conflictive mimetic desire and leads to a quasi-sacrificial crisis as defined by Girard for archaic religion. The third chapter focuses on the psychogeographical writings of Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. Walking the streets of London, the pedestrian represents the excluded underside of the world of Ballardian speed. The walking subject is portrayed in terms of the expelled victim of Girardian theory. The fourth chapter considers violent crowds as portrayed by Ballard's late fiction, the writings of Stewart Home and David Peace's GB84 (2004). In accordance with Girard's hypothesis, the discussed narratives reveal the failure of scapegoat expulsion to restore peace to the potentially self-destructive violent crowds. The fifth chapter examines the post-apocalyptic environments resulting from failed scapegoat expulsion and uncontrolled mimetic conflict, as portrayed in Sinclair's Radon Daughters (1994), Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Oryx and Crake (2003) and Will Self's The Book of Dave (2006).

Also from

Cojocaru, Daniel

View All

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All